Kailu County fire, March 2018 开鲁县 · Kailu County
The fire started on 24 March 2018 in Kailu County, China, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,096 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 213th largest in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region since 2016 (of 259 with a page). Number 38 in China in 2018, of 44.
Compare with…
We have the GWIS perimeter for this fire, but the VIIRS sensors did not capture it in enough detail: no day-by-day evolution, but the split by municipality is there.
- Burnt area
- 1,096ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 3days
- 24 Mar 2018 – 26 Mar 2018
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- counties
- Started on
- 24 Mar
- 2018
- Danger at start
- 16
- Moderate · FWI index
Where it burned
The weather it burned in
It had gone 8 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.1 mm on 5 Apr.
This area had burned before
No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Beijing (Dongcheng and Xicheng) boundary: geoBoundaries · Lee Beryman, OpenStreetMap · © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL 1.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
1,098 ha0.3 %
Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance runs from the point marking the centre of each area to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.
The weather day by day
ECMWF ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, the standard reference for past weather, and the Canadian Fire Weather Index (the same system Copernicus uses), computed by WorldFires from that data. Days after the fire run until the first rain.
Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 24 Mar | 21.8 °C | 9 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 16 |
| 25 Mar | 25.6 °C | 3 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 26 Mar | 27.6 °C | 5 % | 65 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 27 Mar after | 28.5 °C | 9 % | 67 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 28 Mar after | 15.0 °C | 10 % | 50 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 29 Mar after | 11.3 °C | 8 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 23 |
| 30 Mar after | 14.5 °C | 3 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 31 Mar after | 14.6 °C | 29 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 17 |
| 1 Apr after | 26.9 °C | 5 % | 66 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 2 Apr after | 22.0 °C | 10 % | 55 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 3 Apr after | 7.3 °C | 6 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 4 Apr after | 5.3 °C | 7 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 5 Apr after | 2.9 °C | 15 % | 37 km/h | 1.1 mm | Low 10 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Kailu County fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 24 March 2018 and 26 March 2018: 3 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 1,096 hectares (11.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Kailu County (1,098 ha, 0.3 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 27.6 °C, humidity dropped to 3 % and gusts hit 65 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 35, class High.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of China (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.
Where to verify it
A satellite detection is not an official report. Final figures and the fire’s status are published by each country’s emergency service.
Emergency number: 119 · Emergency number and official warnings ›
Satellite cross-check
History of this page Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
No changes since 24 October 2026.
Does something look wrong on this page?
This page is built from satellite data and official records, and it sometimes gets things wrong: the wrong dates, the wrong town, two fires merged into one, or something that was not a wildfire at all. If you know this fire first-hand (you live nearby, saw it, fought it or reported on it), tell us what really happened and we will check it.
Report an error
How we know this
- Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. No Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
- Weather: Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, in cells of about 25 km.
Where this data comes from
The perimeter comes from the Copernicus Global Wildfire Information System (GWIS), which rebuilds it from MODIS and VIIRS heat detections and publishes it under CC BY 4.0. It is not measured on imagery as in Europe, so it is an estimate. Heat detections come from the VIIRS sensors aboard Suomi-NPP and NOAA-20, distributed by NASA FIRMS at 375 m resolution. Municipal boundaries come from geoBoundaries ADM3 (Open Data Commons Open Database License 1.0). The area per municipality is computed by WorldFires by crossing the perimeter with those boundaries, so it may differ from each country’s official figure.